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202 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
Polybios states that the metretes of wine in the Po Valley was worth two obols and
in Lusitania one drachma.'86 T. Frank states that these prices seem preposterously
low, and he explains that neither area had an export market; 187 the normal Roman
price was six to eight times the Lusitanian price. For Ptolemaic Egypt, Heichelheim
has presented a lengthy table for the price of wine in which it appears that the cheapest
price per keramion, which he regards as a half metretes, is 3% drachmas and that the
average is considerably higher.188 Concerning Delos, Larsen has written, " The one
definite fact known concerning the price of wine is that in 296 B.C. 1 metretes cost
11 dr." 189 He notes that the normal sum was 10 drachmas and in another context
states that wine production could not have been profitable if the wine sold at 4
drachmas 3 obols a metretes.'90 The prices of wine at Rome are given by T. Frank in
Volume I of the Ecotnomic Survey.'9' In Diocletian's Edict, the entire second paragraph
was devoted to the prices of wine. Vin ordinaire (10) sold for 8 denarii an
Italian pint (one seventy-second of a metretes), but good Italian wines brought much
higher prices.'02
To return to the problem of the numerals to be restored for the cost prices of the
two entries, we may offer the following table for some of the lowest figures which
may be restored.
Wine Prices
First Entry Total Price in Drachmtas Price per Metretes in Drachmas
(VI, 60-61) 380 .64
1280 2.17
2180 3.69
5280 8.94
6180 10.47
etc.
etc.
186 II 15; and XXXIV, 8.
187 Economic Survey, I, pp. 195-197.
188 Op. cit., p. 111. A. C. Johnson (Economic Survey, II, pp. 314-315) lists prices which will
give about the same average. There are, doubtless, additions from recent papyrological publications.
M. Segre, in identifying the figures 22 drachmas 1 obol with the price for a metretes of Cyprian
wine, has noted some such prices in Arnuario della Scuola archaeologica di Atene, XXVII-XXIX,
1949-1951, p. 322. For wine prices in Byzantine Egypt, see L. Casson, T.A.P.A., LXX, 1939,
pp. 1-16.
189 Op. cit., p. 392. For a more recent discussion of wine prices at Delos, see J. H. Kent,
Hesperia, XVII, 1941, p. 312.
190 Op. cit., p. 394.
191 Pp. 193, 284, 355, 403-404.
192 We have not included in our study of the price of wine any reference to the graffiti on
ancient amphoras (Hesperia, XXV, 1956, pp. 1-24). Their connection with wine is uncertain. Just
as the stamnos was associated in our inscriptions with oil, olives, and vinegar as well as with wine, so
we know from literary sources that the amphora was a container, for example, for oil, milk, and